The Hunger
by MikeHawke
Summary: Misato sacrificed everything in her vendetta against the Angels and later NERV. Gendo sacrificed everything to get to Yui. Neither of them realized they were creating a worse monster than Zeruel until it threw itself upon them. Rebuild continuity, set after 3.33.
1. Envenomation

Disclaimer: I own none of the copyrighted characters in this work and I am not making any money off of this story.

Author's note at end of chapter.

* * *

Shinji Ikari shivered, trying to keep down the sniffles as he kept mechanically plodding forward through the night. He, Asuka and Rei stumbled through the darkness, night having fallen after the events of Fourth Impact.

The once proud city was torn apart by the machinations of an insane group of evil old men. Buildings crumbled while strange helices of unknown origin spiraled through the sky above. The gigantic EVA-like creatures, the Failures of Infinity, lay motionless and inert around the Impact blast area for miles around.

Shinji Ikari followed after Asuka Langley Shikinami and Rei Q, his expression as glum and dead—his psychotic break having almost broken his mind completely. Fuyutsuki's mind rape and Gendo's careful scheming had done their work well; Shinji's very brain matter was injured from all the psychological scarring. He felt numb, his body barely functioning as it was. It took all he could just to walk.

Kaworu was dead, and Rei was lost to him forever. Everything he'd ever done was for nothing. All he'd wanted was to please the people around him, and what had he gotten in exchange?

Nothing.

Everything he'd ever done was for nothing. He was completely _worthless_.

If he had the energy for it, he might have gotten angry. He might have thrown a tantrum, shouted and screamed and ranted and raved…but what was the point?

He was just a weak, stupid little boy. He was _nothing_ , now.

All that was left was for him to return to WILLE, to the people who hated him more than anyone, and get thrown into a prison cell. Doubtlessly he'd be executed on the spot.. He'd seen the looks on their faces when they blamed him for Third Impact. Every soldier in that stupid ship wanted him dead. They'd only held off on attacking him outright because Misato was present.

He wasn't stupid, he knew hatred when he saw it. And in the bridge crew of WILLE he saw utter loathing.

Shinji debated pulling free from Asuka's hand and running off…but she'd chase him down. She wasn't content with letting him die in peace. No, she had to make him suffer first, just like she did when she nearly broke his neck fourteen years ago over a misunderstanding.

Bitterly, he wondered if she even remembered his attempt at saving her life in space. Probably not…but he couldn't just let her die, could he?

Not that it mattered. Nothing he did ever worked right—

He was jolted out of his inner misery by Asuka stopping abruptly in front of him. He didn't even bother to raise his head as he bumped into her.

The redhead was the first to speak, her remaining eye casting about in alarm. "What the fuck…?"

The very earth shook, tremors shaking the landscape around the trio. Rei was able to remain upright with some difficulty. Shinji stumbled, bumping into Asuka again as the shaking turned especially fierce…

Asuka turned around to glare at the imbecilic vegetable behind her. He was still unresponsive, annoyingly enough. She was about to shove him off of herself when the tremors ceased, and a horrible, groaning noise reached her ears.

Both children looked down to see a rapidly lengthening crack in the ground, stretching into the distance both before and behind them.

Asuka blinked in surprise, and was caught off guard by a pair of soft, firm hands on her back.

Before she could start screaming at the boy's audacity, the hands shoved her back about three paces, saving her just as the ground broke open.

Asuka stared at him, stared at the two blue eyes staring at her with a terrible, wrenching _sorrow_ -

Shinji barely had time to scream before the world fell away, and he plummeted into the darkness below.

The young man plummeted, tumbling down a chasm into the darkness, nearly cracking his head one moment, his limbs thrashing wildly in mute panic. He finally landed in a deep pool of warm, black sludge.

Coughing, he sat up, waist deep in the warm fluid. The stuff had cushioned his fall but was stuck to his back and in his hair. Cloying and thick, it stretched like tar as he sat up

He raised a hand, staring at the weird, clingy substance surrounding his body. It was already stuck to the back of his hand, and he saw a bit of it stretched across his palm. It was jet-black, and out of the puddle the strands stretched across his glove resembled a spider's web. More strands were extending out of the pool, anchoring themselves in all directions. The spiderweb resemblance started to grow stronger...and Shinji grew nervous.

He started to sit up, only to find his other hand stuck in the gel. He tugged on it once, but it was as if something had tight hold of his other hand. He turned his head to look and gasped.

His left hand was stuck fast, a small army of streamers slithering up the wrist, interweaving themselves with his plugsuit as they rapidly climbed up to his elbow.

Before Shinji could even react, the rest of the inky black ooze came alive.

A forest of tendrils erupted out of the puddle and interweaved about his body. The streamers extending into the walls broke away to coil around his legs, binding them together. More of the things lashed out, winding around him as he thrashed madly.

Shinji screamed, thrashing about as he tried to claw the tentacles off him but to no avail. In seconds he was completely cocooned in a huge black web, tendrils erupting out of the pool to vine around the rapidly hardening substance. The warm streamers clung to his body like glue, binding to his flesh through his plugsuit and coiling around him as he thrashed about.

"GET THIS OFF OF ME! GET IT—GET IT OFF ME!"

More of the slime slithered up from the chrysalis, covering his neck. He could feel it spreading higher as he struggled limply, tears of frustration falling from his eyes. First his only friend dies and now he's about to be eaten by a horrible slime monster...

"Can't get it off…I can't stop this! I can't move…I can't…I can't—"

Higher it rose, covering his mouth, his nose, his eyes sliding shut as the blackness spread.

 _I can't…it's all over me…_

 _Won't let go of me-it won't let me go! I can't stop this, I can't! I can't fight anymore…please, no more…no more! Make it stop, make it stop! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE-!_

Shinji felt the last of the darkness claim his vision before everything went dark.

He awoke, so to speak, in a train station.

Shinji started to walk, staring about at the horribly familiar surroundings. It was all coming back to him, the pain, the sorrow...and a figure walking away from him.

"W-Wait! Wait, please wait!"

The Third Boy broke into a run, his hands desperately reaching for the man who couldn't even spare him a backwards glance.

"Why did you leave? What did I do wrong? Tell me, _what did I do to deserve this_!?"

The figure stopped. It turned to face him and Shinji recoiled, horrified.

It wasn't his father. It was built like his father, it had his suit and beard, but the face was a horrifying rictus of a grin. Savage fangs glinted in the afternoon light, and two gigantic white eyespots stared out of the inhumanly smooth face directly at him. A hideous, pink tongue rolled out of the thing's mouth as it spoke.

"You ran away, _boy_."

Shinji turned away, but the thing resembling his father crossed the gap in an instant. The features resembling Gendo faded away, the suit melting, running into a mass of black slime. The arms grew whiplike, the suit, the human features vanishing almost entirely. The creature continued to lengthen and rise, leaving behind something enormous and writhing, a towering creature made of darkness with a hideous fanged maw and the same glowing white eyes. Bizarrely, it almost resembled a suit of some kind, a living costume without a wearer. Its many grasping limbs

It slithered towards Shinji as he stumbled back, trying to escape the monster, only for a tentacle to lash out and wrap itself around his wrist. The humanoid

 **"Do not leave us. We have much to discuss, Shinji Ikari."**

Shinji froze. "Y-You can talk? Wh-what are you?"

The fanged maw grinned wider as the beast replied, **"Yes, we can talk, and we can do so much more. We are called...the symbiote. More importantly, we have a question for you. Who do you hate most?"**

Shinji did not even hesitate. "Myself."

 **"Why? What have you done to deserve such treatment?"**

The former EVA pilot stared at the great slime monster before him, and his hands shook as he actually screamed. "I killed so many people I can't count them all. All my friends are dead, and everyone in the entire world hates me! And worst of all I gave all that up to save the one person I ever loved...and she's dead."

The slimy creature listened to his rant with patience, before replying, **"And who, Shinji Ikari, killed her?"**

Shinji blinked. "I did...didn't I?"

Memories played on repeat in Shinji Ikari's head. He thought back, to the day he fought the tenth angel...when he tore open its core to get to his beloved Rei. She was pulled out, and safe, with him in EVA-01's core. She was with him, she was safe...inside the beast.

His eyes widened. That's what happened. He knew Misato lied to him. Everyone but Kaworu lied to him, and even Kaworu didn't trust him enough to tell him everything. Shinji's fist clenched. Kaworu didn't deserve what happened to him either.

"Yes...that's it..." The creature seemed to grow larger as Shinji thought back to his rude awakening. Slowly its hollow form started to thicken, reshaping itself into a more solid figure. **"Remember what they did to you. Remember who and what they took from you."**

More memories rose to the surface: his father abandoning him, Asuka's constant abuse, Misato using and abandoning him in turn, Rei being devoured, Sachiel punching out his eye, Shamshel impaling him, Ramiel roasting him alive, Sahaquiel stabbing two holes in his palms, Bardiel strangling him to death before his father used him to murder Asuka, the desperate battle against Zeruel, Gendo abandoning him again and Kaworu being murdered by WILLE-

That last one sent a spike of pain through his heart.

"They took everything from me. I trusted them, I wanted to join them...!"

 **"Because you had no other choice. You were led around by the nose, told only what would make you useful to them, and put aside until they needed you to save them again. And how were you repaid?"**

The living, hollow suit removed its hand from his arm.

 **"Say it."**

"But Misato..."

 **"Yes, Misato. What did she do for you when you first met? She used you just like the others did. She ignored you until you were her useful puppet, her good little soldier to fight her battles for her. Did you forget how _helpful_ she was when you had that reunion with your father?"**

How could he forget? Misato had gotten right in his face, talking over his objections and all but ordering him into the chair. He'd trusted her...and that was his mistake.

He couldn't trust any of them. Asuka, Misato, all of them were worthless, faithless traitors.

As he lay still, covered in slime, musing on how much he'd suffered...he felt _hatred_ , venomous and powerful. For the first time he felt hatred, hatred for Misato who'd betrayed him, Asuka who tried to kill him, his father for everything...

"I...I hate them..."

Shinji clenched his fist as he felt that first spark of wrath building in his heart. Not righteous fury, not the determination that let him fight Zeruel...this was something else. This was something _venomous_.

"I bent over backwards for them, did everything I could to please them, and they all abandoned me _again_ to get their fucking ship going—"

Everything he'd done, he'd done for them, for Gendo, Misato, someone to actually give two shits about him and they didn't even care. He'd given them everything and they'd used him and spat in his face.

 **"Yes...they abandoned you. You should not hate yourself. You should hate the others; the ones that used you, the self-righteous ones that abandoned you and strapped a bomb to your throat. They turned you into a scapegoat to cover their own failures, Shinji. Think about it; you were a child. Who do you think the world would have blamed for their mistakes?"**

The creature slithered both arms around his shoulders, its voice a sibilant whisper. **"Do you really think the world would have allowed them something as powerful as that ship if they knew the truth? The whole truth?"**

"But what can I do? I have no power, not anymore. I don't even have an EVA Unit to help me. I have to go back to WILLE now and try to make up for what I did. ...what other choice do I have?"

 **"Why must you make amends for something that is as much their fault as it is yours? Why must you clean up a mess that was created by forces beyond your control?"**

"Because my friends—"

 **"Are dead, or were never your friends to begin with. You said yourself how you were betrayed, how much you suffered under their whims when they were only out to save their own skins. They care nothing for you. They will kill you."  
**

The sibilant voice, seductive and warm, whispered in his ear. "And this is ignoring that your father is still alive."

Shinji froze. His father...

 **"Your father is seated on a throne, the king of this world, most likely gloating on how well he played you. WILLE will try to kill you once more and this time they will succeed. Neither side cares about you, so what do you owe these people?"**

Shinji fell silent. More memories were dragged up, playing before him like a movie of his own horrendous life: all the abuse, torment and indignities he'd suffered working for NERV coming back to haunt him.

 **"What do you owe them? They have used you, betrayed you, abandoned you when you needed them most, abused you on every level save the physical. Why should you go back to them?"**

Shinji looked into the monster's face, and whispered, "Where else can I go?"

The darkness answered, " **Wherever you want. You've been kind, you've been polite, and put the needs of others before your own your whole life out of fear that you would be hated. We offer you eternal love, eternal congress with another. You never have to be alone again..."**

His eyes flickered between their usual sad blue and an angry red "I…I…"

 **"Listen to us. You do not have to accept our offer…but we offer you power. We offer you love. We offer you pleasure. We offer you strength beyond your wildest dreams. And we offer you something glorious-a chance at _revenge_."**

A thought occurred to the boy. "But what do you need me for?"

 **"We are powerless without one to bond to. Accept our gift, and we will both benefit…or you can decline. We will release you, and you can go back to those who will undoubtedly torment you or force you to play child soldier again. And do not delude yourself; you will never please them otherwise. They will kill you if they cannot use you."**

The grip on his shoulders tightened.

 **"Accept us, let us in. Let us give you power to take revenge on all those that have wronged you."**

Shinji gulped nervously, his jaw working for a moment before he replied, "And what do you get out of this?"

 **"We get a host to feed on, to love. You can do as you please. You can take your precious Rei back if you wish. You can be loved again…but the choice is yours. We will not force you...just say yes." _  
_**

Shinji closed his eyes, thinking. He thought of Gendo, of Misato, of Asuka and all those who had abandoned and betrayed him. He thought of his horrible life, how everyone had spent years kicking him around, how everyone thought him pathetic.

He thought of all the bastards in NERV and his newly discovered wrath grew so thick he could choke on it.

The grinning monster in front of him laughed aloud. **We sense your hatred, Shinji, your fury, and its taste is sweet. Do you hate WILLE? Do you hate NERV?**

Shinji hunched forward, his bangs shadowing his eyes, his pain so great it nearly choked him. "Yes...yes I do. I hate all of them-Misato, Asuka, Gendo, all of them! _Nobody cares about me so they can all just die!_ "

The symbiote stretched, shivers of pleasure running up and down its amorphous body as it listened in to him. **"Yes...that's it. Bond with us, Shinji Ikari, mind, body, and soul."**

Shinji's eyes snapped open. The irises glowed red as blood.

 _"Yes."_

The creature extended a hand. Shinji took it. The beast melted away, its muscular body flowing like water as it started to meld together with his arm. The voice continued its rant.

 **"Accept our gift, and all of our power."**

"Yes!"

 **"And together we will have our _desire_!"**

The train station faded away. In the cavern, the cocoon shook, and shattered into a thousand pieces. A muscular, athletic figure dropped to the ground, small in height but built like a predator. It turned its glowing white eyes to the shaft of light above, and bared its many teeth.

 **"We will have our vengeance..."**

Inside the newly liberated Geofront, Gendo Ikari sat in his desk, ruminating in his usual position.

Everything was going according to plan. WILLE was easily defeated, the Angels were out of the picture, and all that was left was to set off Final Impact and reunite with his beloved Yui. Third Impact, Fourth Impact, all those deaths meant nothing as long as he got his hands on his wife again.

If it had been in his nature to do so he might have gloated. Fourth Impact in particular was almost laughably easy to set off-it was as if the world itself conspired to give him what he had needed.

His son had proven the useful pawn he always was. Gendo allowed the resentment he'd fostered towards the third boy to fester for a brief moment. Wretched child stole Yui's affection away…but no matter. Yui would soon be back in his arms. Nothing else mattered-

His thoughts were interrupted by a muffled crash that shook the entire ruined structure

Gendo looked up sharply. "What the devil was that noise?"

He knew that the structure had been unsound since the events of 14 years ago, but this…was worrisome. The gigantic geofront had been removed from the ground and while the internal structures were still intact the crash itself was…damaging. He pushed a button on the desk, connecting him to Fuyutsuki's quarters elsewhere in the structure.

"Fuyutsuki, report in."

Nothing but static…the commander tried again.

"Fuyutsuki, where are you? Report in!"

Fuyutsuki was in fact running as fast as his aged legs could carry him, which was admittedly not fast enough.

Kouzou was old, and far too out of shape and fragile for this sort of chase, but the human body was capable of amazing things when its life was at risk. His shoes pounded on the catwalk,

And Fuyutsuki knew this thing wanted him dead. The moment he'd walked into the room with the cloning tanks and seen that beast inside, standing next to one of the long-dead Rei clones…the sound it had made when it screamed at him-

He felt his stomach heave, both from the exertion and the horrible images. What happened in the EVA battles was detached, clinical, many miles away from his own station.

But what he'd seen in that room, the organs scattered across the room, the blood spatter on the walls as the beast finished with the dummy plugs.

His terror-widened eyes glanced behind him, but he only ended up stumbling, hitting the ground hard enough to break one of his arms.

Whimpering, the old man struggled to get back to his feet, hearing a hissing growl behind him.

 **"Hungry…"**

Gendo's second-in-command struggled to rise, gripping his wounded arm. His lungs burned, his blood turning to ice as he beheld the giant shadowy figure before him. At first glance, it looked like a human in a suit…but the proportions were all wrong. The arms were just too long, the height at least eight feet and those gigantic muscles…

Fuyutsuki took a step back as the figure turned to face him, two blank white blotches covering half of its face serving as eyes. It spoke again, in a warped voice.

 **"Want…food. Hungry….so hungry…."**

Fuyutsuki swallowed. "W-Wait, please…I'm certain I can find you something…something other than myself of course. Let's j-just talk this out, young man—"

The thing laughed at him. The lower part of its blank face tore itself open, revealing a jagged row of misshapen teeth. A long, serpentine tongue slithered out to taste the air briefly.

 **"We think not."**

Fuyutsuki had only a few seconds to scream before the monster fell upon him. A forest of tendrils erupted out of the creature, thick, powerful streamers that raced towards him and enveloped him in seconds. Fuyutsuki's scream was cut off as the beast's tentacles squeezed off his air supply and dragged him into the darkness.

In seconds all that was left were inhuman growls, the tearing of meat and the crunch of bone.

* * *

A/N: I've always wanted to make a tale of Shinji getting his revenge on the main cast. It's happened before, by other, better authors, but none of them have ever quite done it the way I wanted it I figured, why not do it myself?

The trouble was how-I wanted a monster story, but I also wanted a revenge story. Then I was playing one of the Spider-Man games and it hit me.


	2. Exenteration

Disclamer: I don't own Evangelion or Marvel.

Now that that's out of the way, it took me forever to figure out how to make this scene feel right. Anyone can splatter a load of guts and gore over a scene, but to make that actually scary takes work.

In the end, though, I had fun with it.

Enjoy! For this time, a certain someone makes some important calls, and a madman reaps what he sows!

* * *

Gendo moved through the depths of Neo-NERV central, sidearm unholstered. Fuyutsuki never failed to report in, one could set the time by his routine…if he had fallen silent, then clearly they had an intruder.

With that in mind, the king of the Lilim firmed his resolve, and stepped outside into the corridor.

The base, his kingdom, was quiet as the grave. All he could hear were his own footfalls echoing off the walls and ceiling as he tread carefully through the hallways leading to Fuyutsuki's quarters and the dummy plug plant.

Abruptly, a pipe fell in the distance, clattering to the floor with a bang. Gendo froze, a slight bead of sweat trailing down the side of his face. This base was still in pristine condition, a giant machine ready to make a man a god...for anything to be out of place even now was unthinkable. The plan had gone off without a hitch!

He kept walking, gun at the ready. WILLE couldn't be after him, not this soon-the barrier he'd put into place ensured that the AAA Wunder wouldn't be able to attack Neo-NERV directly. No one else who'd want attack him would have the resources. There was no way anyone could have snuck into the Geofront through the other entrances, no one else would have the knowledge.

He was jolted out of his thoughts by another crash, followed by a horrifying, gurgling roar that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Gendo felt his pulse quicken. He considered going back to his office, but that was a foolish idea as well-whatever was inside the base might be in that direction.

He and Fuyutsuki could regroup, and release one of the EVA series on whatever it was. Yes, he decided, that was perfect-

Gendo rounded the corner and his train of thought stopped cold as he found Fuyutsuki.

Or rather, what was left of him- a skeleton, marred with spots of pink flesh and black goo, along with a few scraps of cloth surrounding the remains.

Gendo froze, hearing some monstrously heavy breathing.

 **"Hunger….feed…"**

That voice…that warped, horrible voice sounded like a thousand people talking at once, in disjointed horrible unison.

The commander of NERV looked up, seeing something out of a nightmare clinging to the ceiling of the hallway, still chewing on a scrap of meat. The enormous blank white eyes turned to face him as it swallowed and growled at him.

Fear gripped his heart in its icy claws as he took off running. The monster above him gave a great, gurgling roar and dropped to the floor on all fours, standing upright to race after the Commander.

 **"You shouldn't have lied, Gendo…so hungry. HUNGRY!"**

Blindly , Gendo fled, the beast just a pace behind him, its massive limbs tearing apart the metal catwalk as it chased him. It opened great slavering jaws, endless rows of sharp, pointed fangs gleaming in the artificial light as it gained on him.

He chanced a few wild shots behind him—the bullets impacted the black flesh but he saw no blood, not even LCL flying away as they tore into its hide. The monster just roared louder.

Gendo rounded the corner, his lungs burning, sweat pouring from his body…but not from the exertion.

He couldn't die yet! He couldn't! He was so close, Yui was almost within his grasp! Hurriedly he raced back the way he came, intending on entering his personal quarters and sealing the doors behind him.

Then he could activate the Rei clones, one of the MP EVAs, and kill this thing now-

He jerked to a halt as something long, gooey and incredily tight wrapped around his right bicep. He cried out in pain as the thing yanked on his arm, intent on dragging him back towards the horrible thing behind him.

Behind Gendo, the monster opened its jaws, a long, lurid pink tongue rolling out to slaver in anticipation.

 **"Kill you…kill you slowly…"**

That decided it. Gendo raised his sidearm, and aimed at his own arm. Gritting his teeth, he fired it three times, the third shot shattering his humerus, the tentacle's pull doing the rest, severing his arm above the elbow.

Despite the horrendous agony he was free. The black beast was so surprised it stumbled briefly—giving Gendo just enough time to slip inside his quarters and seal the heavy blast doors.

_SCENE BREAK_

Misato Katsuragi stared at the screen in something akin to shock.

On the screen, panting and covered in blood, was none other than Gendo Ikari. The true cause of all her suffering, the mastermind behind Third and Fourth Impact…

And he was standing in the screen, clutching at his missing right arm and begging them for help.

"I'm sorry, Gendo, I'm having a hard time understanding this. You want us to help you?"

"Indeed."

Misato raised an eyebrow behind her shades, arms folded under her chest as she glared coldly at the Commander of NERV. All the hatred inside her rose to the surface as she spat, "And why should we help you?"

"Because…"

Gendo gritted his teeth, nearly falling to one knee.

"If you do not, th-then…th-then you will leave me no choice."

"What does that mean?"

"You…no longer care for him. That is…that is obvious. You strapped a bomb…to his throat…and allowed me to take him."

Misato nearly snorted. "Don't pretend to care about him now, Gendo. You've never cared about anyone but yourself-!"

"Are you any different? Do you really think I don't know about what you had to do in order to get control over that flying leviathan? The lies you told, the lines you crossed"

Another muted boom shook the camera on Gendo's end. He continued speaking, loudly.

"But that does not matter now. Something worse than myself is loose in my base, killed Fuyutsuki, and—"

He got no further, as the door was finally wrenched open, and was flung across the room. Everyone in WILLE stared at the screen as a terrifying nightmare stomped into the dim light and advanced on the Commander.

_SCENE BREAK_

Something abruptly slammed into Gendo from behind, the weight of it knocking him to the floor, driving the wind out of him.

Gendo rolled over, his visor knocked askew, to see a pair of enormous blank white eyes glaring at him. The giant mouth unhinged, revealing a face underneath the black flesh. Hurriedly Gendo tried to scramble for his sidearm-only to drop it with a scream as the monster struck him again.

Gendo hit the ground, straining to get to his feet, wheezing, "I…I don't understand. I planned for this to the hilt. The biometric locks were keyed to the DNA of myself, Fuyutsuki, and the Rei clones, so how could something like you get inside?"

The monster unhinged it's jaw, the top half of its head folding back like the hood of a jacket as the lower jaw extended down towards its chest, the tongue and mandible melding together with the surface of the creature's chest.

The true face of the monster before him glared down at the commander of NERV as he gasped in recognition. Gendo stared into the eyes of his would be killer, and realized he had no one to blame but himself.

"Y-You…why?"

The monster, deaf to Gendo's sobs of pain, advanced towards him, growling. "The hunger demands we feed…but we know you. We know how much you hurt us. You took everything from us, and you are not worth consuming."

Gendo thought quickly. "You're correct. I am not worth killing. I am not the one that attached a bomb to you and set you up as a monster. I am not the one who allowed you to take the fall for the Impacts-URK!"

The beast grabbed him with both hands, dragging him off the floor to dangle helplessly above the ground. Gendo was around 5'9'' and yet this monster towered over him now, lifting him as though he weighed nothing.

 **"No. None of your lies. No more of your manipulations. You don't deserve to live."**

The head reshaped itself, and the creature opened its fanged maw wide and screeched. With a grunt it swung.

 **"YOU DON'T DESERVE YOUR LIFE!"**

Gendo was thrown across the room, the impact rattling his teeth. He hit the ground, coughing, trying to get to his feet.

 **"Thanks to you, we have nothing but poison running through our veins."**

The great schemer, the commander of NERV, the architect of humanity's demise barely had time to scream before the black beast was upon him. It kicked him in the ribs, shattering three of them before it laid hands on him again.

 **"We are toxic to everyone we touch!"**

It struck Gendo across the face, breaking his nose, bellowing in his ears as it struck him again and again, shattering teeth, breaking his jaw, pummeling him with greater and greater force.

Gendo was thrown once more, the impact against the floor breaking his remaining arm and injuring his spine. To his horror, he found that he couldn't feel his legs anymore…and all conscious thought was blotted out by sheer terror as something seized him by the back of the neck. He couldn't feel it but something else had grabbed him by the legs.

The monster that had once been Shinji Ikari and a pile of odd goo raised their shared enemy over their head. Opening its fanged maw wide, it roared.

 **"WE ARE VENOM!"**

What followed was a noise like something thick and wet being ripped apart, then finally silence. All was quiet, save for the sound of blood dripping off of the walls and ceiling. Venom breathed heavily, panting with exertion as it dropped two piles of meat and bone to the ground.

 **"And we are...alone."**


	3. Infuriation

_A/N: To address a recurrent question, Shinji is indeed Venom. However he is not merely based on the original one, the famous one that showed up in the original 616 comics and movies. I drew most of my inspiration from the cannibalistic Ultimate (1610) Venom as well as a couple other incarations of the symbiote like Agent Venom and the otherwise dreadful Mac Gargan Venom. Why? To spice things up-as Peter Parker most famously stated, "A loser dressed like Venom is_ still _a frickin' loser."_

 _And that's not scary at all._

* * *

Three weeks later, a small platoon of armed soldiers gingerly tiptoed through the ruins of what had once been Tokyo-3.

The wasteland was so badly torn apart it was beyond a disaster area-buildings scattered everywhere, the once proud infrastructure of the city completely destroyed, the gigantic Failures of Infinity toppled over in every direction…

But what unnerved the men and women of WILLE was the quiet.

The city had once been alive with the hustle and bustle of everyday life-a lone bright spot in the gloom that was the post-Second Impact world. Now that was all gone, and never coming back.

A few of the men tightened their grips on their guns. They all knew who was responsible, and they dreamed of the day they could finally get their revenge…

The group's leader, one Ensign Musashi Lee Strasberg, tightened his grip on his rifle as he strode through the ruins towards the Geofront.

As the small group of experienced, heavily armed fighters came closer to their destination, he tapped his helmet.

"Are you seeing this, command?"

 _SCENE BREAK_

The AAA Wunder had touched down a few miles from the actual Geofront. With the L Barrier density suddenly at an all-time low, the ship could get close enough to actually land on top of the structure if they so chose.

On the bridge, Misato, Ritsuko and the rest of the staff were watching the infiltration team's progress via the cameras built into the team's protective suits. They wouldn't stop bullets, but with NERV having a crew of two old men they weren't expecting a firefight in the first place.

The real danger was whether or not they still had an Evangelion that they could activate, in which case the strike team would be dead anyway.

But as they rounded the corner, gasps went up around the bridge.

The red core corruption on the ground was just _gone._ Nothing but brown earth in every direction. The buildings, the dirt, even the craters had somehow been drained of the core material that had poisoned the land for miles around the impact site.

What had replaced the corruption was almost as grotesque, however. Giant structures similar to spider-webs, stretching from building to building, covering some of the Failures it what appeared to be cobwebs. They appeared to have been strewn about haphazardly, threading through the ruins in no particular order.

Misato turned to Ritsuko. "What…what are those?"

Ritsuko appeared at a loss for words. "They look like some type of webbing, but the scale is massive-the spider that could have spun those would have to have been the size of a grown human adult. But the threads are the wrong color. Spider-webs appear white or translucent but those structures are solid black!"

 _SCENE BREAK_

Musashi scowled in disgust. "Don't touch anything. We still have no idea what we're dealing with here."

The other soldiers all wordlessly acknowledge the order, and continued their trek towards Neo-NERV Central, blissfully unaware of the third party watching their every move.

The hunger gnawed at the very core of its being, watching the long pork just amble away. It longed to devour one, just one, but the host was awakening again, and would reject their bond if it tried.

It could turn on him, but he was the first host it could bond to that would not simply die in a matter of days. His taste was exquisite, the inner workings of his body, somehow different from a standard Lilin, perfect for its needs.

It was content to return to the base, allowing the host to awaken where he last slept, and plan its next move in peace.

So long as there was no threat to Shinji's life, it would not overtake him again.

 _SCENE BREAK_

Shinji Ikari awoke.

He didn't recognize his surroundings; every thing felt…off. His body felt all wrong, almost like he was too big for his own skin.

He sat up, a hand coming to his head as he struggled to remember. He remembered-

-Desperately fighting Asuka in Central Dogma—

-Cutting off Kaworu's synchronization after Kaworu refused to help him fight-

-Stubbornly trying to get the Spears, desperate to having one thing go right—

-Shock.

-Fear.

-Betrayal!

The events of Fourth Impact came back to him in a rush and his hands shot to his mouth as a wave of nausea hit him. He clamped his mouth shut, bile and something much worse rising in his throat as the guilt, the pain, and the sheer enormity of what he'd done that day threatened to overwhelm him again.

Finally, he managed to avoid throwing up. Slowly, he tried to stand, his legs buckling underneath him as he leaned on the wall for support.

He was in some part of NERV, he realized. The emblem was everywhere and this area was in much more pristine condition compared to the rest of the old base. Not even any rusted pipes!

Gingerly, he took a step forward. For some reason he was still clad in his plugsuit. The last thing he remembered before passing out was…

Huh. He remembered falling into a hole. He remembered the darkness…and them all became a blur of hunger, and anger which meant…he didn't know what it meant.

Shinji didn't recall how he'd gotten here, or why he felt so full either. In fact, he thought, prodding at his slightly swollen stomach, it felt as though he'd put on a little weight.

Slowly he took stock of his surroundings…and the color drained from his face.

He was in what had once been an office…turned into a crime scene.

The walls were splattered with rusting, fading stains up to three meters high, some of which were thrown so high they had hit the ceiling.

His eyes trained back down and his hands covered his mouth in horror.

The corpse before him had been mutilated to near unrecognizability: intestines ripped out and tossed aside, rib bones showing through gashes to the chest, with the torso ripped apart into two pieces. The victim's shirt and coat were torn apart, a huge puddle of congealing blood replacing the legs. The face was speckled with blood but otherwise left alone, so that the look of horror and agony was still there in the glazed, empty eyes already filmed over in death. The waist and legs were tossed against the walls, blood congealing around the stumps.

And the eyes…the face had been clawed by something horrible, a ruined plastic and steel visor still planted onto his face, shards of it still embedded in the cheekbones and eyes.

But Shinji knew that face…and he fell to his knees, grief and horror filling his throat as he stared at all that remained of his father.

"Wh…What? What did this to you-?"

The eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling, the horrific scream stamped on Gendo's ruined, bloody features…

Shinji clamped both hands over his mouth as he took in the gory scene, before finally giving up and breaking down sobbing.

He held his face in his hands, and wept bitter tears. Gendo had been all the family he had, horrible as the man had been, and deep down Shinji still wanted nothing more than to reconcile…

But now that was done. Gendo was gone, no longer able to torment or praise him. He was lost to Shinji, now and forever.

And worst of all, some small part of Shinji, some dark, angry, hurt portion of his soul felt sweet vindication. He tried to ignore it, to squelch and hide it but the feeling was so profound. The part of him that was the 4 year old abandoned at the train station felt nothing but satisfaction as he stared at the head. The 28 year old kneeling in the filth felt only grief.

Shinji didn't even know how he got here. All he had were dim memories—clambering out of the pool, something horrible caked onto his body, weird hallucinations, and being so very, very hungry….

His stomach rumbled. Already he could feel the odd pangs again….he stared at his father's already decomposing corpse and felt his stomach roil.

But to his disgust that wasn't revulsion he was feeling in his guts. It was-

CRACK.

The Third Boy was rudely brought out of his misery by a horrible pain in the back of his head. He hit the ground, clutching at his head and whimpering as a group of armed men ran into the room, guns trained on him.

"This is Musashi here. We have found the Third Child."

 _SCENE BREAK_

Musashi trembled with suppressed anger, dying to shoot this brat dead on the spot. Thoughts of revenge and how everyone would praise him no matter what the head bitch in charge of the Wunder might say danced through his head. He held his temper, however, as he had his orders to bring Shinji in alive.

On the other hand, the orders said nothing about his condition…

Musashi turned to the other men in the unit. Wordlessly they all nodded back to him, quietly…and switched their body cameras to sound only.

With that, he raised a steel-toed boot and kicked Shinji square in the chin. "I'm gonna enjoy this, you little shit."

Shinji sprawled on the ground, unable to rise. Groaning, he started to sit up, only for another blow to strike him, harder.

Then they proceeded to raise their boots and take turns kicking and stomping the shit out of Shinji Ikari. Inside him, the symbiote roiled, gnashing its teeth, already starting to rise up. It wanted blood, it wanted payback!

But before it could take over entirely a well-placed kick knocked him completely insensate.

Finally, one of the soldiers ziptied his hands and lifted him like a sack of potatoes. The symbiote listened in-they were being taken somewhere. Judging for itself, it decided to lay low for the moment.

Like a spider, it would be patient. It would wait for an opportunity to present itself; then it would strike and sink its envenomed fangs in deep.

 _SCENE BREAK_

Inside the currently grounded Wunder, Misato eyed the group of soldiers in front of her.

The unit sent to secure NERV central stood before her, backs ramrod straight, eyes front. They'd repeated the same story so many times that her head hurt. They'd found NERV central, deserted, and the interior wrecked by some kind of animal. She'd seen the pictures and the video-the claw marks torn in solid steel, the doors warped as if something had grabbed and shoved them open, the two corpses that had to have been identified by their dental records as Gendo and Kouzou—but the last part she knew to be a lie.

They claimed that Shinji had attacked them with some type of blunt object, and one of the soldiers even had a suspicious-looking bruise to prove it. This coincided with the moment that their body cameras apparently experienced some type of "emp disturbance." Afterwards the soldiers had proceeded to "subdue the target with non-lethal force."

Which was complete crap, Misato was dead certain, but she couldn't very well punish them for something she only thought they did. Not in a tenuous position like this; with all the politcal fallout from allowing a Fourth Impact to happen, the WILLE fleet was still moored in the Pacific until further orders. If she started sowing dissent in the ranks now she'd have an even greater headache to deal with later, particularly without any proof.

She sighed. "I will deal with you later. Dismissed."

She had a boy to interrogate.

 _SCENE BREAK_

Shinji had been dragged into his original cell, and unceremoniously tossed inside by one of the security staff members designated to guard this sector of the Wunder. Sakura had given him a brief, examination, as delicate as she could, although Ritsuko wasn't quite as gentle about obtaining some blood samples.

As Shinji was led in handcuffs down the hallway, the inner voice he'd heard was growling again. The same voice that had spurred him on to slaughter Gendo and devour Kouzou was whispering in his ear. He shivered; the seductive voice calling to him again.

He didn't dare mention it to anyone-the armed guards surrounding him looked as though they wanted any excuse to shoot him.

But the hunger was back, the voice was back, and worst of all the euphoria and fury in the back of his head were growing greater with each passing moment.

The Other, as he named it, wanted _blood_.

And as he looked around the ship, seeing all the cold looks and bitter glares from the crew…he wanted to give it all the blood he could.

Everything he'd done, all the pain and suffering he'd gone through for their sake, and now they abandoned him too? They turned on him? He'd saved them! They only existed now because of his sacrifices!

His bangs shadowed his eyes as his blood started to boil, the hunger gnawing at the very core of his being.

Ignorant of the inner turmoil eating at her charge, Misato sat across from Shinji, her face inscrutable behind her visor. Shinji stared back at her with a deadpan expression, looking as bored as if he were watching paint dry.

She spoke. "Do you have the slightest idea of what you've just done? You set off another Impact, you endangered the lives of every man woman and child on the planet, you-"

He whispered, "The last Angel is dead."

She blinked. "What?"

Shinji's bangs shadowed his eyes as he kept up the same flat, dead whisper. "I saw the DSS Choker, the thing you put on my neck, go off while it was on the Angel's neck. It's what really stopped the Impact."

He finally met her eyes for the first time since coming onboard the Wunder. He appeared devastated just mentioning this.

"But I have to know something, Misato. I'll tell you everything, but I have to know…how did it activate?"

Misato blinked. "What do you mean?"

"It was keyed to the remote you were holding the day NERV sent EVA-09 for me. Ritsuko said so. You were the only one that could activate that choker."

He looked at her, his eyes full of some sort of desperation, a last hope that she wasn't a murderess, and asked again, "Did you kill the 13th Angel?"

The older woman thought back to the day of Fourth Impact, the day everything she'd planned had gone pear-shaped, and the remote was in her hand…

"What does it matter?"

Shinji's jaw worked for a moment, the muscle in the mandible jumping slightly as he clenched it. " _Did you kill the 13th Angel?_ I need to know."

"Why?"

Shinji's voice broke, his head bowed as he replied, "Because I shouldn't be alive, but the Angel saved my life. I need to know how it died."

Misato remembered the few specs on EVA-13 Mari had been able to tell her about after the events of Near Fourth Impact. The monstrosity had two entry plugs, not one. She'd even detonated the DSS Choker and yet it still did not shut down…and Shinji was sitting in front of her now.

Misato thought about it, really thought about the helpless, idiotic boy before her. Her training in the military had covered many topics, but this was not an interrogation. This was an interview. And Shinji was about as helpless and meek as a puppy. Hardly a threat.

So she answered, "So what if I did?"

There was a sudden, sharp crunching noise. Misato blinked, and stared at the boy she was supposed to be interrogating. Shinji blinked, a line of red slowly running out of the corner of his mouth.

He said, "Excuse me."

Opening his mouth, he reached inside, and with a horrible wrench removed a cracked molar. He'd been gritting his teeth so hard he'd broken the tooth in question. Ignoring Misato's disgusted expression, he examined the broken tooth, saying, "I'm sorry, Misato. It's just that I'm a little bit **absolutely livid**."

Misato blinked. Was she imagining things or did his voice drop about two octaves there?

Behind Shinji, one of the guards raised his rifle to discipline the insolent prisoner. "You will show the Captain respect, you little-!"

He got no further, nor did the other guard behind Shinji Ikari.

Misato stared in abject shock behind her shades. Shinji's blank, placid expression contrasted mightily with the two hideous black tentacles erupting out of his back. The two guards hung, impaled on the extended limbs, limbs dangling uselessly as blood dripped out of their mouths.

More tendrils were _hatching_ from his body as Misato rose from her seat, backing away in horror. The tendrils holding the two dead men aloft split apart as Shinji stood up, spreading to engulf the bodies and multiplying rapidly as they spread. In seconds all that was left were a few scraps of cloth and some goo-slickened bones on the floor. Shinji kept staring at Misato with a flat, level expression through the entire process.

He seized the heavy table, and casually flipped it over against the wall with a bang. He stood up, his bored expression contorting into rage, his eyes changing to a glowing, vivid red.

"Sh-Shinji, what the-?"

" **We asked you a question, Missssato…"**

Shinji's plugsuit was melting; the colors fading away to pitch-black as he advanced on the woman who'd betrayed him.

" **Did you kill the 13th angel? Did you snuff out his life? Are you the one that set off the bomb that ripped him apart?"**

The darkness was spreading as his voice roughened, his face obscured by a mask with two great white lenses. Inky tentacles threaded and wove together into a suit, building into muscles across his frame. More tendrils undulated out of his shoulders and back, waving about as if they had a life of their own. The mask split open along the jawline, revealing perfectly white fangs, three inches long, and a long, lurid pink tongue extended like a great serpent, tasting the air.

In seconds, the boy had become a monster, at least seven or eight feet tall. Misato reached for the switch to his bomb collar in her jacket as a wall of solid muscle with a great white spider-emblem on his chest, rose up before her. The lenses of the eyes turned to face her, and the hideous tongue slithered out to taste the air.

He raised one of his clawed hands and grabbed the woman by the throat.

" **YOU KILLED OUR ONLY FRIEND!"**

He lifted her off her feet as easily as if she weighed nothing, his enormous jaws opening wide as he bellowed in her face. She tried not to think about the smell as she cringed back, his tentacles wrapping about her wrist, pinning her to the wall and forcing her to drop the remote to the ground. Venom scooped up the remote in a second tentacle, snatching it away from her.

 _" **WE'RE GOING TO KILL YOU!"**_


	4. Resolution

Finally got this to a point worth showing. Author's notes at the bottom. Enjoy!

* * *

Venom glared at Misato, the blank white eyes somehow radiating pure murder as he tightened his grip on her throat. With a growl he lifted her with one hand, as though she weighed nothing, and slammed her up against the wall. She struggled to reach for the remote, but he squeezed her throat tighter, forcing her to gag.

The thing that had once been her charge rumbled, **"You shouldn't have done that. You shouldn't have killed him."**

She choked out, "He was an Angel! An enemy-!"

Venom shook her as snarled back in response. **"HE WAS A GOOD PERSON! HE DIDN'T DESERVE WHAT YOU DID TO HIM!"**

He threw her across the room, and more by luck than judgment she landed against the door, which immediately slid open with a pneumatic hiss. Hurriedly, clutching at her dislocated shoulder Misato ran for it as a platoon of armed soldiers took aim behind her.

Ritsuko was waiting for her, staring at her superior's bruised throat in surprise. Removing her hand from the door control, she said, "What happened in there?"

Misato coughed. "Shinji's not in that room. Whatever is in there, it's weird and pissed off."

The two women abruptly jumped as the sound of tearing metal rent the air. The monster had grabbed the door behind her as it sealed shut, growling, muscles bulging as he pushed and finally slid it open with a crash. Venom stuck his head out of the door and screamed, **"GET BACK HERE YOU BITCH!"**

Ritsuko stared in horror as the nightmarish creature tore the doors apart further, striding out into the corridor after her. Casting about, his tongue slithering around as if tasting the air, his head snapped towards them. The mouth opened up to reveal a row of fangs, sharp as daggers, bared in a grin.

 **"We have your scent. You will not escape us, nor will you escape what you've brought on yourself, Katsuragi. You and the rest of WILLE are already dead."**

Venom stomped out into the light, still stalking his prey, to find two rows of helmeted, armed guards standing before him. Semi-automatic weapons trained on the giant beast, although a few of the people holding them were trembling. They were trained to fight humans, not monsters...

Shinji decided he liked this new feeling. As he took a step forward, and the guards raised their guns, he saw two in the back with their knees trembling. Behind them, Venom saw Misato leaning against the wall, Ritsuko by her side tending to her superior's injured throat.

Venom's tongue snaked out of his mouth, licking his chops. He took another thunderous step forward, pausing as he saw them retreat a pace back. They were afraid of him?

Then he caught sight of his appearance in the reflection of one of the one-way windows. His fangs bared, his muscles standing out like boulders, his height increased to tower over the others, spikes and tendrils ever shifting…

The monster in his reflection was terrifying. And yet he felt no fear, no disgust at his newly grotesque appearance. He felt a kind of grim satisfaction. He didn't look like himself.

Oblivious to the creature's inner contemplation, the squad leader shouted, "Stop, Shinji Ikari, or we will shoot!"

Shinji Ikari was not a threat. Shinji Ikari was a small boy they could use, abuse, manipulate and threaten. Shinji was harmless.

He was venomous.

The symbiotic monster roared back, **"SHINJI IKARI IS NOT HERE! ONLY VENOM!"**

With that, the dark beast charged. The men opened fire, bullets speeding forward faster than the speed of sound, and the monster jumped. Bouncing from wall to ceiling, even in these cramped quarters, he dodged bullets left right and center. The few that impacted bounced off his toughened Venom kept running, having taken enough firepower to take down a charging bull elephant, and was completely unharmed. To his surprise, Venom felt no pain. He felt downright euphoric.

Ritsuko looked up from her work and briefly gaped. "That's not possible. Nothing human-sized could survive a barrage like that without an AT field!"

Misato was already backing towards the door. "You can _marvel_ at his abilities later. Right now we need to get out of here!"

The monster opened its jaws wide and roared, raising its claws as it ran at them. Cannoning into the first line it scattered them like ninepins, great swipes of its powerfully muscled arms smacking them into the walls and ceiling. Shrugging off the bullets, he turned his attention to the two fleeing women.

 **"YOU CANNOT HIDE FROM US, MISATO KATSURAGI! WE'LL HUNT YOU TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH!"**

One of the guards, smarter than the rest, noticed Venom's brief distraction. Raising his rifle, the soldier had good sense to aim for the inside of his mouth and opened fire, blasting apart the monster's head from within.

Venom swayed for a moment, and collapsed to the ground.

The silence was almost deafening. Misato paused in her attempts at escape. Ritsuko turned back to face the scene behind her.

The guards kept their guns trained on him, watching for any sign of life. Venom remained motionless. One of the guards advanced, raising the muzzle of his rifle and nudged Venom's left foot.

Ritsuko sighed in relief. "Good. He's dead. That woman's legacy is no more…"

"Oh really?"

The beast's head restitched itself together in seconds. One moment it was a mass of blood and bone fragments, the next he was whole. The head was completely restored, Shinji's glaring red eyes briefly showing through before being replaced by the symbiote's own white distorted eye spots were slightly larger.

Several tendrils extended from various points on the suit, attaching themselves to the walls. Venom used them to rotate himself into a standing position, clenching his fists as he trembled with rage.

The security team stared, hurriedly reloading Venom rose from the ground, an inhuman growl building in the back of his throat as he got up to his full seven foot six height, towering over them all.

 **"That…was…unpleasant."**

Misato swallowed. "Oh fuck. FALL BACK!"

The guards kept firing but Venom was already moving. With a roar he dove towards them, tanking bullets as he fell. He landed heavily on one soldier, snapping her spine like a dry twig and caving in her ribcage. Rising, he swung a backhanded fist the size of a frozen ham at another man's head, caving in his nose and dislocating two of the man's neck vertebra. The choking man fell with a gurgle as Venom turned on the rest of the squadron. Raising his claws and swinging, he tore them apart like a bear among chickens.

Away from the bloodshed and violence, Ritsuko opened one more door behind her, Misato following swiftly through before Ritsuko locked it behind them…from the outside.

Venom impaled one unlucky sod on his clawed fingers, looking up to see the last two remaining WILLE soldiers beating on the doors, desperately begging to be let out away from the monster.

Venom licked his lips, and inside the symbiote, for the first time in his fourteen years of conscious existence, Shinji Ikari laughed. He tasted power for the first time, true, real power, not a burden like EVA-01 or a trap like EVA-13.

Inside the suit, Shinji Ikari felt euphoria. He felt strong, like he could throw an eighteen wheeler truck with one hand. For once he felt power, and no responsibility to anyone else but himself.

Venom stood up to his full height, tongue undulating from side to side, tentacles extending from his shoulders, muscles bulging in an obvious show of power, and laughed. Shinji couldn't help it-the euphoric joy, the great strength had finally gone to his head.

 _This is better… we feel better than we can remember. This power…I don't feel alone anymore either. This is better than we felt before coming to Tokyo-3 in the first place. We can do anything we want now!_

His stomach gurgled. Venom grunted and turned his attention to all the fresh, warm meat on the floor.

Some of it was still moving, a few guards still wheezing out their last breaths. Venom's tongue snaked out of his mouth to whip about excitedly.

 **"Misato. We are coming. We are hungry."**

_SCENE BREAK_

Captain Asuka Langley Shikinami tapped one foot, impatiently waiting for her turn to see him. Shinji was back, Misato should have been thrilled.

Instead Asuka had been shunted to one side once again, wondering just what was going to happen next.

Ever since she got back without Shinji, Misato had been even colder than usual if it were possible. Her anger, her hatred seemed to be eating at her without a target, and Asuka seemed to be a convenient punching bag now.

Even with Gendo out of the picture WILLE didn't seem to be pulling their shit together any time soon.

Asuka wanted to hate him, really she did, but all she could think about was the last time she'd seen him.

She'd seen the look on his face when he fell into that hole. Before the fear set in, before the grief, he'd looked at her with something unreadable and warm.

That look on his stupid puppy dog eyed face…ugh.

She scowled again, pacing the room. Mari watched her, smirking.

"What's the matter, princess? You look like your dog just died."

Asuka snarled, "SHUT UP."

Mari's teasing smirk vanished, replaced by a look of something approaching sympathy. "I read your report, by the way. Did the puppy-boy really do that?"

Asuka rounded on her, teeth bared. "And so what if he did! I don't give a shit what good deed he did now, he's the reason we're in this mess!"

Mari simply shrugged, interlacing her hands behind her head as she reclined on her cot. "If you didn't care, why are you shouting?"

The anger on Asuka's face slowly drained away, replaced by a vulnerable look in her eye.

Averting her gaze from Mari's knowing look she turned away. "Why the hell did they lock us in here anyway? Ever since they brought him on board they've been acting as weird as possible."

Further conversation was killed as the door was snatched open with a bang. Two soldiers, Kenta Shiota and Musashi Lee Strasberg, were suited up and waiting for them, guns at the ready.

"Captain Shikinami. Pilot Makinami. You two and that thing are needed at the bridge."

Asuka blinked, before realizing he was talking about Rei Q. The EVA pilot had waited patiently in the corner, doing as she had been ordered since she'd come on board the ship.

Just like a doll, Asuka thought disgustedly.

"Lead on, Musashi. And no funny business."

Musashi's lip curled, but he said nothing. Their mutual dislike was well known to the staff at WILLE; starting when Musashi had loudly wondered what "that bitch" had done to earn her keep around here aside

t hadn't yet come to blows the management had done nothing to curb it. Musashi hated her with a passion but didn't dare act on it-low level grunts were much easier to replace than EVA pilots. Asuka wanted to claw his eyes out but didn't want the entire security force out for her blood.

So they worked together, at a stalemate, one longing for the chance to put the arrogant mouthy bitch in her place, the other wanting to throw the obnoxious bullying dick off the bridge.

Stepping off her bunk, still clad in her plugsuit, Asuka strode out like a queen, Mari grinning and following suit.

_SCENE BREAK_

On the bridge, technicians and soldiers scurried about like headless chickens, grim terror stamped on their features. Some of them were tending to people with odd burns on their limbs and bodies, others sat in silence, trying to work on getting the security feeds on one of the lower levels up and running again.

Asuka strode past the peons in her path and stepped right up to Misato's perch, where the Captain was still barking orders at the staff.

"Captain, with all due respect, what the hell is going on!?"

Misato paused while shouting for someone to get more guns to the lower decks, and turned to face Asuka in surprise.

"Musashi didn't tell you?"

Asuka snorted. "Of course that misogynist didn't. Now what's going on?"

For answer, Ritsuko, who'd overheard, pushed a button on one of the computer consoles to her left.

Asuka turned her eye to face what was happening and her jaw dropped.

The brig was now a slaughterhouse.

Anonymous limbs were scattered everywhere; blood splatters up to three meters high, some of it dripping from the very ceiling. The doors were torn open, strange black resin staining the metal, structures resembling spider webs stretching across various portions of the hallways leading out into the center of the ship.

Asuka had seen a lot of death and destruction after Near Third Impact and her own battles with the Nemesis Series, but back then she'd had EVA-02 supporting her, WILLE's forces at her back.

This…this was somehow worse. This was something on a much more personal level of evil.

"What did this?"

Misato sighed. "Shinji. Or at least, something that used to be him."

Asuka turned to face her superior officer in shock. "WHAT? But he's a powerless wimp! He's no threat without an EVA Unit!"

"Not anymore."

Ritsuko called up more footage. Asuka stared, slack jawed with shock as a seven foot tall, jet-black monster tore apart an entire security platoon, throwing them about like ragdolls, claws scything through Kevlar like it was tissue paper, a set of vicious jaws literally biting the head off of one unfortunate grunt….

"That….that's what he's become?"

"Yes. Somehow he's become some kind of monster and calls himself Venom. He's tearing apart everything in his path, and he's sworn to kill everyone in WILLE."

Misato kept her face straight ahead as she continued. "So we're going to kill him first."

* * *

A/N:Shorter than the last chapter, but I wanted to get this scene moving already.

Also to answer another question, this fic is not meant to be another awesome Super!Shinji fic. This is meant to be an answer to the question "How many ways would handing someone like him superpowers go horribly wrong?" And another one: "What happens when you keep abusing the person that is the only reason you're still breathing?"

This was also made because of another minor complaint. I've seen at least three other Shinji revenge fics done right, but they all miss a certain opportunity. If Shinji's throwing away his morals then why the hell wouldn't he kill Gendo _first_?

Nobody in NERV ever gave a shit about Shinji beyond his uses save for Rei, Kaworu, and _maybe_ Asuka. He has never forgotten this, nor will he forgive them for turning their backs on him when he needed them most.


	5. Extermination

A/N: Shorter than the last chapter, but I doubt I could do anything more than I already have here. Read and review, everyone!

* * *

"Misato, are you sure about this?"

"No, but right now I want to be rid of this thing. Forever."

The bandaged up Captain of the AAA Wunder kept walking, Ritsuko hurrying after her. After his earlier rampage through the brig, they had the entire wing of the ship cordoned off and locked up tight, long enough to come up with a plan.

This was to be a one-way trip; Misato was taking no chances of anything coming back through to kill anyone else here.

A small battalion of soldiers, armed to the teeth with shotguns, rifles, grenade launchers and more were to enter the cordoned off wing of the ship. They would find the monster and kill it, no matter the cost.

As Misato kept barking orders, Ritsuko directed another pair of men into the ship's laboratory. Inside, two WILLE agents pushed in an enormous, watertight container filled with a viscous black fluid.

The fluid inside roiled and moved with a life of its own.

Ritsuko had found a sample of Venom's leftover goo on Misato's jacket and sealed the contaminated article of clothing in the container for study. The symbiote portion inside slithered about with a mind of its own, beating on the plexiglass uselessly as it tried to escape.

From her studies, the goo was some kind of living organism, a parasite that was neither human or Angel in origin, but something entirely new. It bonded itself to other creatures to use as hosts, and from there became shockingly powerful.

But without Shinji in front of her she couldn't tell exactly how powerful, and no one wanted to test the limits of the murderous killing machine loose inside WILLE. So she had two technicians wheel it away for further study, and in the meantime tried to find a way to permanently kill it.

_SCENE BREAK_

The squadron, consisting of the finest soldiers under WILLE's command, checked their weapons one last time, before walking inside. Over a dozen soldiers, handpicked by Misato and survivors of the unrest after Third Impact, hardened by war and the horrors of the world Gendo created. Each of them knew a dozen ways to kill a human with a paperclip. They'd been protected with body armor thick enough to stop a titanium plated knife, riot helmets capable of deflecting bullets with ease.

Their weapons? Rifles with armor piercing rounds, the same ones they'd held against a helpless fourteen your old strapped to a table after wresting him from a biomechanical monster. WILLE's soldiers were truly the bravest of the brave.

Aoba and Maya stood side by side, their own handguns at the ready, just in case the beast inside the ship chose to escape.

Maya nodded to the squadron head. He nodded back, raising his rifle to a ready position.

Keying in the sequence, she opened the sealed door to the cordoned off wing of the ship…a small gust of wind hit them as the stale air inside rushed out.

The assembled WILLE soldiers tried not to retch at the slaughterhouse scent that hit them like a force of nature. Maya felt her own weak stomach roiling against her, but held it down, not wanting to appear weak in front of so many men.

Slowly, they marched inside, and Aoba and Maya sealed it shut.

_SCENE BREAK_

Misato stood in the bridge, pacing irritably. "It's been almost an hour since they went in there. Where is he?"

Ritsuko shrugged. "We don't know. Their trackers are still moving about. They split up inside the brig, but they've been moving in odd patterns since then. They haven't found hide nor hair of that monster."

Misato, fed up, pushed another button on the console.

"Status report?"

"Ma'am, we've been pacing the same range for the past hour now, and we still haven't seen him. All we've found is this strange black…webbing, so to speak. He seems to be generating it. We've found a couple bodies tangled in the stuff already, possibly more."

"Very well, continue the search-"

"Yes ma-URK!"

The transmission was abruptly cut off. Misato inhaled sharply and stabbed the button with her finger.

"ALL UNITS CONVERGE ON THE LEFT REAR ROOM OF THE CORRIDOR!"

On the main viewscreen, 14 dots converged on the fifteenth. One of the soldiers called back. "There's no one here!"

"WHAT!?"

"Ma'am, I'm sorry, but all we have here is a dead body, with blood everywhere. There's some on the fucking ceiling!"

Misato gaped. "How could something that big just disappear? Even the Angels couldn't do that…"

The soldier who'd spoken said, "Wait…I hear something."

Everyone on the bridge was silent, listening in. The cameras weren't working but they could still hear the soldiers' voices.

"I hear…breathing..."

Everyone was witness to what happened next. An earsplitting shriek nearly made Misato's head ring and she flinched. What followed, they couldn't see, but they could hear. They heard bones crunching, guns blazing in the war zone, and flesh being stripped from soft human bodies. Men screamed, women howled, and Venom's roars drowned out the gunfire as he savaged the entire squadron.

As suddenly as it began, the melee was over. The trackers, the glowing yellow dots on the screen, all winked out.

Abruptly, one of the cameras, formerly jet-black, cleared up as if it had never been covered at all. Midori screamed in dismay, Sumire covered her mouth in shock, Hideki and Koji both gaped in horror at the war zone before them.

The bodies were torn apart, guns broken and scattered in every direction. Limbs were scattered in every direction, blood splatters still dripping off the ceiling, anonymous piles of bones and organs dotting the floor.

One of the com-links came to life, and a hideously warped voice said, **"Never wound what you can't kill, bitch."**

The bridge was silent, everyone struck dumb, the first trickles of icy fear starting to worm their way into the WILLE crew's hearts. Those had been their finest soldiers…and he'd ripped them all apart like they were _nothing_.

Misato remained stoic, save for a small, hidden gulp behind her collar, and answered the line. "What do you want?"

The only reply was a curt, " **What?"**

Misato sighed, swallowed her pride, and said, "What do I have to give you for you to stop eating my crew?"

 **"** **Oh, first you try to kill us a dozen times and you expect us to trust you? We know you, Misato. You wouldn't offer that if you didn't intend it as a trap."**

Misato trembled with irritation. "I'm trying to help you."

The reply was a garbled shriek. **"Help!? We think you've helped quite enough!"**

On the bridge, Sumire couldn't hold back anymore. "What about all those people you killed, you hypocrite? What about all the people that died when you set off Third AND Fourth Impact!?"

Venom growled, **"It is true, we are a mass manslaughterer. We've killed billions, most by accident. But you know what? We did it after someone stuck us in a giant robot, and neglected to mention the thing was a walking bomb worse than a nuke. We did it after someone used us, lied to us, and did everything in their power to break us. And you don't care about any of those people or you wouldn't be running this ship!"**

That made everyone freeze. Misato blinked behind her shades. "What?"

 **"** **There's no way in hell any of you told the truth about what happened that day. No government would possibly trust you with this much power after you blundered into letting not one, but two Impacts happen under your watch. We pulled the trigger, but you were the ones that handed us the gun with smiles on your faces."**

Misato winced, although Venom couldn't possibly have seen it.

 **"** **And all you did afterwards was use us, abuse us, torment us daily. And if we so much as complained you acted as though we should have been grateful for the opportunity to get ourselves beaten half to death to keep all of you alive. Well, no more of that. We have nothing to lose now, no morals to compromise, no loved ones for you to hold over our heads. All we have left is our vengeance against you."**

Venom's voice was a low growl as he finished, **"And we will hunt you all down to the last man and woman on board this ship."**

Misato swallowed, trying one last time. "Shinji, you can't just-!"

 **"** **Shinji Ikari is dead. We are Venom. We are coming. We are hungry."**


	6. Replication

Maya and Shigeru paced outside the corridor. Maya checked her watch.

"It's been almost an hour now. What do you think happened in there?"

Shigeru snorted. "I don't know, but whatever it was, I'm not opening that door for anything."

The two continued their nervous conversation, not noticing the door starting to smolder. A smell akin to burning metal filled the air, making Maya's nose wrinkle. Her usually weak stomach started to roil and she turned to see the door starting to melt.

"Sh-Shigeru! LOOK!"

Shigeru turned to see a black-gloved, clawed hand erupt out of the weakened door, grasping the right side of the formerly soldered shut structure. Growls filled the air as Venom grabbed the door and slowly started to shove it open.

Shigeru wasted no time. Grabbing Maya, he turned and ran down the hallway, radioing Misato as the roars behind him grew in volume.

"Misato! The plan failed! Repeat, plan failed! Venom is free! I repeat, Venom is free!"

Venom watched them go, debating whether to give chase, but changed his mind.

Having fed so well recently, the symbiote had discovered it was time to spread itself. To seed progeny, and assimilate more victims. The current host had proven a rousing success with the proper motivation-all he'd needed was a little push in the right direction.

As Venom turned away from the two fleeing bridge technicians, the suit continued to ripple around its host's body. The symbiote felt the first of its many spawn inside, clamoring to be free. It wordlessly sent this to its host, placing great emphasis of the urge to replicate. Its host thought for a moment, before turning away from the still fleeing fools and heading elsewhere.

Venom lumbered away, already having an idea in mind.

_SCENE BREAK_

Sakura Suzuhara continued running down the hallway, her own small service pistol in hand. The Wunder was on full alert now, the red emergency lights blazing in the dimness. The ship was airborne, and nobody on board would dare land now with Venom still running rampant indoors.

Thinking of the monster that had once been Shinji Ikari made Sakura break into a cold sweat. If the Captain didn't desperately need her bandages changed Sakura wouldn't have dared leave without an escort, but the first aid station in mind was barely 10 feet from the main bridge. One of many redundancies in place in case of assault by NERV...or worse things.

Sakura opened the cabinet, holstering her gun and hurriedly began rummaging through the packages, pausing momentarily to look around to ensure no one was going to sneak up around the corner. Venom could be anywhere, she was certain of it. She needed a roll of gauze, urgently.

She kept rifling through the packages in the red alarm lights, until a drop of water landed on the back of her palm.

She blinked, and stared at the drop of fluid. That was far too sticky to be water...it almost looked like saliva.

She froze, as another drop landed on her head. And another. And another…

Her knees started to tremble. Her blood ran cold as her throat went dry. Slowly, she started to look up…

To see Venom, clinging to the ceiling, grinning, his tongue sliding out to wave at her before retracting.

" **Hello, there."**

Sakura opened her mouth to scream, only for a giant arm to reach down and scoop her off the ground, a hand clamped over her mouth as he held her as if she weighed nothing.

" **Shhhh...relax. You showed us kindness. We remember. We will not kill you, but we have questions for you. Nod if you understand.**

The fear in her heart was strong, but she still managed a shaky nod.

" **Do not scream, or we will simply adhere you to the wall and continue on our path of destruction until we find what we seek without your help. You can help save some of your crewmates if you answer one question."**

Venom bared all of his fangs in a sinister parody of a smile.

" **Where are the pilots' quarters?"**

_SCENE BREAK_

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, WE'RE CONFINED TO QUARTERS?!"

Musashi couldn't hide his smirk at Asuka's obvious irritation.

"Until Commander Katsuragi says otherwise, you are to stay here until the monster is located again. That thing is a killing machine, and it's already eaten a dozen soldiers at least. According to the Captain you're too essential to risk losing."

Musashi adjusted his rifle. "So until she says different, Captain Firecrotch, you're staying right here."

Asuka's blue eye glared back at the other man with undisguised hatred, but he was unmoved.

She scowled and slammed the door in his face, returning to pacing the room. Mari leaned back on the bed, smiling.

"Well think of it this way, Princess. This way we don't have to worry about the puppy-boy coming to eat us now."

"That's not the point, Mari. They act like we're still fourteen year old kids! Or THAT is even a person!"

She gestured to Rei Q, still standing in the corner silently. Ritsuko had no more use for her and the command staff had made her Asuka's responsibility until further notice.

"But did you see the camera footage? What Puppy Boy has turned into?"

Asuka paused, remembering the sadistic, violent monster on the screen, and trying to connect it to the pacifistic, timid boy she'd seen earlier. Venom had literally ripped those people apart in seconds…

"I can't believe it's really him in there. I know he set off Fourth Impact but to see him like that..."

Mari shrugged. "Well, it's not like he has any reason to like us. We strapped a bomb to his throat and killed that other pilot. I'd be more surprised and worried if he wasn't out to get us."

Asuka was spared a further reply by a tremendous crash outside. The door was grabbed and swiftly wrenched off its hinges and Mari, Asuka and Rei came face to face with Venom.

_SCENE BREAK_

Venom grinned at them, slowly striding inside as he loomed over the trio of girls before him. The symbiotic monster had shrunken from seven to six feet since they last met, the muscles and sinew compacted into a more manageable form, but the grin still remained.

" **Hello, girls. It's been so long since we last met."**

Mari stood up from the bed sharply, moving to stand beside Asuka, who glared back at him, tall and proud.

"What do you want, Ikari?"

Venom grunted.

" **Ikari is not here. Just Venom. And we want…."**

That familiar pink tongue rolled out of his mouth, whiplashing about at them. Asuka's lip curled. "Is that supposed to scare me?"

Venom let his tongue retract. " **Oh, you're going to be more than scared in a moment. Especially after I get what I want."**

Mari said, "Well? What do you want?"

A pause. " **Actually, we're not entirely certain. Originally we were going to gut you both and open you up crotch to sternum but we feel you're not worth killing."**

Venom growled. " **Misato, on the other hand, is fair game."**

Asuka took a step forward and slapped him. "If you think I'm going to just let you kill her-!"

His left hand reached out and wrapped around her throat, lifting her off the ground with casual ease.

" _ **SHUT. UP."**_

He brought her level with his mask, the great jaws inches from her face as he glared at her.

" **Who do you think you're talking to, Shinji Ikari?! You speak to me that way again and I'll kill you right now. I will choke the life out of you until your eye pops out of your head and you turn blue!"**

Spikes had erupted out of the symbiote, rippling across its shoulders and forming a crown of thorns atop Venom's head. The eye spots had grown jagged and even more feral in appearance in response to the host's fury.

" **In fact, that does it. I have something for the three of you here."**

A red tentacle extended from the palm of his right hand. It wriggled with a life of its own, and he raised it level with Asuka's face.

" **This is my curse upon you, Asuka Langley Shikinami. A taste of all the pain you put us through. The betrayals, the attempted murder, the abuse…all the** _ **carnage**_ **you visited upon us we return to you."**

His hand covered her face, and Asuka's eye bulged out in horror as she felt some _thing_ being shoved into her throat.

Mari heard her fellow pilot's choked scream, Asuka's legs kicking briefly before something flowed over her body, her eye weeping red tears, her eyepatch falling off as the red slime spread.

Venom turned about, the grin on his face widening as Asuka thrashed about behind him.

" **And now, for you."**

A tentacle extended from his shoulder and wrapped around Mari's throat. Lifting her off the ground easily, the tendril retracted like a harpoon cable, dragging her along until she hung suspended off the ground in front of him. Her toes dangled a foot from the ground, her hands coming up to grasp at the tentacle holding her aloft.

"Easy, big fella, I bruise easily. You sure you want to go here? What did I ever do to you?"

Venom squeezed the tentacle once, choking off her quips with ease. "You raise a good point. You never tried to kill us. You, we will be gentle with. Hold still."

His hand removed her glasses before it enveloped her face. Mari had a moment of horrified realization before the slime spread over her head.

_SCENE BREAK_

"How do you feel?"

He stared at the red, powerfully built, feminine figure that rose from the bed. She was covered head to foot in her own red symbiote suit, but hers felt different, built more like flesh than a costume.

Her clawed feet were oddly hinged, like that of a big cat. Her legs and arms were muscular, the hands ending in three razor sharp claws. Four tendrils, ending in sharp spines, extended from her back. Despite the obvious muscle growth, unlike his own body hers remained rather feminine in appearance.

But what caught his eyes most was her face. Before being covered by her own mask, she stared at him with both eyes.

Asuka stared at him with her own two eyes. " **My eyes…you gave me back my eyes…and my organs. I'm…I'm whole** _ **again**_ … **!"**

Venom grinned at the smaller symbiote girl. " **Yes, you are. Is there any part of you now that hates us, Asuka?"**

" **Asuka's not here right now."**

The mask finished forming over her face. Two great orange eyespots, jagged around the edges, with a zigzag line of black teeth around the mouth. She lacked a protruding tongue, but she felt...she felt amazing. She felt powerful. She felt like doing some damage, causing some _carnage_. She turned to face Venom. "What is it I should do first?"

Venom chuckled once. "Go forth and wreak havoc, my spawn. Infect, corrupt, and conquer. You will cause such carnage they will tremble with terror.

 **"Call me** _ **CARNAGE!"**_


	7. Collusion

EDIT: This one should be much more coherent than the last version of this chapter. Please read and review.

" **Now, we're even."**

Carnage turned to face Venom, growling out of her new, hideous maw.

" **Even? EVEN? I'll show you even, you self-centered brat!"**

She tackled him, shrieking. " **You turned me into this THING, just because you can't face reality! You killed all those people, whether you want to admit it or not!"**

Venom punched her in the face, bellowing, " **THAT WAS AN ACCIDENT, YOU BITCH!"**

Carnage screeched at him. Venom roared back.

He spat, " **You always were a difficult girl."**

" **Don't talk as though you know me, you brat! You're the one that ditched us all after the 9th Angel!"**

Venom reared back in surprise. " **What!? No we didn't, we came back! We fought the 10th Angel and killed it!"**

Carnage shot back, **"LIAR!"**

Screeching, she threw herself at him, her right arm becoming a single enormous sword. Hurriedly Venom morphed his own arm into a shield to block the swing.

" **Asuka, Carnage, listen to us. We didn't take your eye from you. We didn't abandon you to NERV's butcher shop. The mess the world is in now is not our fault!"**

Asuka's tentacles lashed out, slapping Venom half a dozen times across the face. " **YES IT IS! IF NOT YOU, THEN WHO!?"**

Fed up with being beaten up, Venom lashed out, using his shield as a battering ram to smash Asuka out of the room into the hallway. " **You know exactly who! The people who are using you as a weapon right now! Wake up, Asuka!"**

" **STOP TALKING TO ME!"**

Musashi was finally cut free by some of his fellow soldiers, albeit they had to use blowtorches to get him down.

Venom's webbing was as strong as steel, and it showed.

Misato was present, her eyes cold behind her shades. "What happened, Musashi?"

Musashi wiped his lip. "Asuka was protecting him and got hit by a ricochet. Then he ran off with her. Probably going to eat her now…"

What he did not say is that he had swiftly abandoned Asuka and the other pilots to their fate the moment he saw Venom come around the corner. Better them than himself or his men. He hadn't even notified the troops of Venom's approach and simply told them to reposition themselves at a better vantage point.

Unfortunately for Musashi, the symbiote had spotted him and immediately webbed the soldier to the wall before walking past without so much as a second glance.

Musashi had heard the shouts and screams inside the pilots quarters, from a distance.

Abruptly they heard a feral scream, followed swiftly by a deep bass roar. A red and black figure sailed out of the darkness, landing with a thud on the metal grating.

The WILLE soldiers all gaped. Misato hissed, "Another one!?"

Musashi whistled. "Yeah, but it's a lady, apparently…"

Misato cursed herself for having left her handgun behind. Venom advanced into the light, growling.

" **You think you're...the hero here? Think you're ssspecial? You're lesss than a pawn. Doing their dirty work...you mean nothing to them."**

" **SHUT UP!"**

The commander of WILLE jumped. She recognized that voice, warped and garbled though it was. "Asuka?"

Carnage got to her feet and with another shriek she tackled him. Venom and Carnage wrestled about, growling and snapping at each other as they crashed into the walls. Carnage raised her hands, allowing them to shapeshift into a pair of axes, and swung them at her larger adversary.

Venom allowed his own mass to shift in kind, creating a pair of thick, layered shields to block her blows.

And then WILLE started shooting at them both. Misato bellowed for them to hold their fire, but the incendiary ammo did its work well.

Both symbiotes screeched, howling as they were peppered by the fiery rounds, alien flesh burning as the rounds tore them both apart.

Venom grabbed Carnage and jumped for it, ignoring her own flailing as she hit him again and again.

The two of them hit the ground with a crash, twin snarls of fury echoing throughout the bowels of the ship.

" _ **You turned me into a monster!"**_

The Venom symbiote peeled away from Shinji's face, allowing his furious, red-eyed glare to stare out at her own. " **You turned me first, Asuka! This form I have now, the scars I carry, the pain in my heart! This shape I now take is as much your doing as it is Misato and my father! I would never have caused Fourth Impact if any of you had told me what the spears would do!"**

Venom raised his right fist, allowing it to grow to twice its original size. The mask reconstituted itself, Venom's fanged jaws reappearing even larger than before, the tongue rolling out of his mouth. " **And what did you do instead, you wretched, arrogant girl? You nearly beat us to death and helped Gendo finish his master plan! Our last hope, gone, and now we have nothing but this body to show for it!"**

Asuka opened her mouth. " **You-You-"**

" **And that is exactly why we're going to slaughter everyone on this ship, starting with you!"**

Asuka, at that, reengaged her own sword.

The two symbiotes charged at each other, about to deliver their finishing blows…but something went wrong.

Venom lashed out with his tendrils just as Carnage extended her blades, stabbing deep into his flesh. Venom's whiplike tendrils wrapped around her neck, squeezing tight…and refused to let go.

Shinji's face was starting to peek through Venom's mask as more and more of the symbiote's biomass was spent dragging Carnage forward. Asuka was unable to stop herself as more and more of her blades shot forward towards him.

" **WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?"**

Asuka shot back, " **IT'S NOT ME, IT'S THIS THING!"**

Both enemies dug their heels in as both symbiotes strained to rejoin with each other. Carnage and Venom were dragged forward, and with twin screams of horror both of them were hurtled together and collided in midair.

Carnage was originally created from a fragment of Venom's suit, Shinji's blood, and Asuka as the host. Having grown, spread within her and gorged itself on her own Angelic infection, the symbiote now sought to rejoin with the larger whole.

Their suits extended more and more squirming tendrils, tangling together, connecting and dragging their struggling hosts along for the ride.

Shinji and Asuka were forced together, screaming in protest as they collided, more and more biomass spreading throughout the chamber and around them like a sick parody of a cocoon.

It was warm.

The inside of the beast was soothing, a warm pulse that eased its hosts' minds. They were curled up, connected in every way but physical, in a soft embrace.

Their minds were linked, and the two saw everything.

Asuka felt Shinji's agony, the rage and pain and bitterness that had poisoned him since he was four years old.

Shinji felt her pain, her drive, her wild ambition, and the bloodlust that pushed her in battle. He saw her memories, her past…

He saw a doll, hanging by a rope, another adult figure hanging from a light in the ceiling. He saw a young girl's smile warped, a piece of her mind scarred forever as she saw her mother's corpse.

Asuka saw a little boy, pressed against a glass window, tears streaming down his face as a beautiful woman was swallowed up by a glowing beast.

The two pilots stared at each other, their own pasts playing on repeat, their minds slowly becoming one as their shared pasts became known to one another.

Asuka wanted to hate him, wanted to attack him as they'd fought before in Terminal Dogma...but looking at him now, seeing what had been done to make him what he was, feeling every blow from the Angels, every cold dismissal from Gendo, every abuse he'd had to put up with from her own temper…

How could she?

Shinji, likewise, wanted to exact his revenge upon her. He remembered what Asuka had done to him, nearly killing him twice over a misunderstanding…!

But he saw her mother strangling her, he saw the Nemesis Series drones nearly cooking her alive, and he saw the abuses she had to put up with in WILLE. The whispers that she was a freak, everyone gawking at her stunted growth, constantly hounded that she wasn't doing enough to please _Misato_ …

They stood on a blank plain, face to face, clad only in their plugsuits. They stared into each other's eyes, understanding and shared grief stamped on their features.

She said, "You're just like me. Life's done nothing but shit on you from day one."

He replied, "Yes. And it hasn't treated you any better. These people in WILLE, they'll use you just like they used me, and then they'll toss you aside when you're no longer useful. Think, Asuka. Gendo and the Angels are all dead. What do you think they're going to do to an EVA pilot once her piloting days are over?"

Asuka paused. "What, are you planning on using me too?"

"Not use you, join with you. I'm not Misato and I'm not Gendo. Our suits are bonded together as one already, and we're already growing stronger. What do you have to lose?"

Asuka hesitated.

He extended a hand to her. "Help me, Asuka. You're the only one that can help me."

She took it.

Misato stared down into the shaft, hearing the horrendous din down below suddenly quiet.

"Are they…are they dead?"

Misato was tempted to throw Musashi down into the shaft to see for himself. Instead she said, "I'm not certain."

The others all backed away as something down at the bottom of the elevator shaft screamed.

An enormous, jet-black, five-fingered claw emerged from the shaft, clawing to its right for a moment before pulling itself out of the gloom.

Venom emerged from the elevator shaft, having grown to enormous proportions. Its blank white eyes had vanished, replaced with two beady red eyes that glowed with a hellish light. The lolling tongue and gaping jaws remained, but the new musculature was nearly inhuman!

Musashi bellowed, "Open fire!"

Immediately the non-combatant and non-frontline personnel scrambled to retreat, screaming as they ran for their lives. Ultimate Venom ignored them-the portion of its mind that had been Asuka Langley Shikinami remembered the irritant before them. It recognized the soldier with the smug, arrogant face, the one soldier that would break all taboos just to hit on her…

The portion that was Shinji growled with jealous rage.

Ultimate Venom lashed out, bladed, jet-black tentacles marred with red veins shooting out to impale Musashi through the torso multiple times. The young soldier barely had a chance to scream before he was dragged forward into the waiting jaws of the alien abomination before him.

His resulting shriek was so piercing it shattered the remaining WILLE soldiers completely. Throwing aside their weapons, they turned and fled in panic, some of them tripping over each other to get away from the ravening beast behind them.

Inside the giant beast, two small children embraced each other. Their eyes were closed as if in sleep, a protective network of tendrils bound around the pair like a cocoon. Their arms were twined around each other, their faces peaceful, and yet their eyes moved as if they were dreaming.

And dream they did.

Shinji saw a giant black beast dashing through the corridors of a massive ship, tearing apart everything in its path. Shots plowed into its slimy flesh, only to pass harmlessly through as if thrown into water.

The monster's fangs bared, it greedily tore into one man, removing his head from his shoulders in one bite. Tossing the dead soldier aside, the beast fell to all fours, galloping forward on the walls and ceiling with ease.

Asuka saw the beast confronted with more soldiers, all of them wielding larger weapons-rocket launchers, armor piercing rounds, even a few shotguns.

The platoon of troops opened fire...and every bullet was deflected by a forest of writhing red tendrils, whipping about faster than the eye could see. The tendrils ended in sharp, jetblack blades as hard as steel, and they whipped forward, stabbing into the guards, left right and center.

Where the blades pierced, they began to feed, draining the blood from the guards in seconds, leaving behind empty, dried out husks.

With each victim, she felt herself growing stronger.

With each blow, he felt himself growing angrier.

Together, they were unstoppable. They were powerful. They were legion.

They were Venom.


End file.
